Your city: road bridges with bike lane

[shootingstar]

What is the experience of your city/area when a road bridge has had 1 or more of its car lanes changed and dedicated solely for a bike lane? Was there great protest by car drivers and then car drivers readjusted, found alternate routes?

Right now, there is a ruckus being raised by car drivers over a impending trial closure of a car lane to change it to a completely dedicated bike lane. Reason: Cyclists must share a narrow bridge sidewalk with pedestrians at this time. Hence, on-road bike lane would alleviate problem.

Sad thing is that there are 2 other road bridges just a few blocks over, less than half a km. away. Since we have been living in a highrise building, we witness from above, how underutilized the other road bridges are by cars during peak hrs. ..for past 8 years.

See excerpt on other cities:
New York recently closed Broadway to car traffic in the Times Square area.
The Bloor Street Viaduct in Toronto lost a traffic lane to two bike lanes years ago, which city motorists adjusted to, and city council there just approved the rededication of a car lane to a bike lane down Jarvis Street, a main downtown artery.
Portland has dedicated bike lanes on several of its bridges. Paris, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Bogota, Berlin, all have dedicated lanes for bicyclists. In all those cities, bike traffic is robust

Rest of article:
http://www.vancouversun.com/travel/C...068/story.html


Photo of the bridge from below taken today:

[Biciclista]

I can't imagine an under utilized bridge in Seattle. We need more bridges.
We are fortunate to have a bike lane built into I-90's crossing between Mercer Island and Seattle for example.

[PamNY]

The bridge news is interesting and I hope you will update us on how it goes. Bridge access is an important issue and one in which cycling advocacy groups have played an important role where I live. I don't think it would ever be feasible to take over a car lane here, but getting access to the bridge at all is important.

I don't see NYC's car-free Broadway as having anything to do with biking. I don't even know if bikes are allowed (they may be; I don't bike in that area so I don't know). In any event, the newly car-free space will be so full of pedestrians that it won't matter.

Closing streets creates so many problems --more delivery trucks double-parked on the adjacent streets, emergency vehicles doing who-knows-what to get access, etc. It's not a simple issue. Closing a single lane on a bridge, of course, is probably a bit easier, unless traffic backs up and causes some other problem.

[shootingstar]

Thx for clarifying so far Pam about NYC Broadway bridge.

Mimi, do all your road bridges allow bikes? Which ones are off-limits?

Today was the first day for the Burrard St. bridge bike lane reallocation trial. Trial is 3 months long.
Reallocation of 1 car lane to a bike lane for this heritage bridge, is a trial that is being viewed closely since it was tried in 1996 for 1 wk. but stopped because of the car-driver objection and city council backed down.
This 2nd attempt, there has been a lot more planning on advance public communication, the cycling advocacy organization having celebatory bridge rides, cake /coffee giveways to anyone, police providing guidance this wk. at key junction points at both ends of bridge. The city engineering dept. has bike and car counter equipment operating on this bridge and other road bridges nearby to continue statistical collection. There is also motion detection cameras on bridge to count pedestrians. They've been collecting the data for past few years. Burrard bridge during good weather days, has 4,000 cyclists daily, Cambie has 2,000 cyclists and Granville 500. These other bridges are within 2-3 blocks away parallel to this bridge, as alternate and currently UNDERUTILIZED bridges by cars.

Cyclists have been advised by the local cycling advocacy organization not to allow themselves to become confrontational in behaviour with the bridge car drivers.

My partner has been interviewed by 5 different tv, newspaper and radio outlets within past 2 days. His name was given in press releases as 1 of the representatives for Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition. Other people were not in town this weekend, etc.

Some pics this afternoon of a group ride I joined in support of bridge lane ride where later, we had some cake at end of bridge, chat-up with other cyclists. There was 1 motorist that screamed at us but many cyclists off the path and eating cake, waved pleasantly to him.
Child that you see was followed closely by the father (which you cannot see). She was gamely pumping up the small bridge grade. Her father is one of the paid staff members for local cycling advocacy organization.
I’m in the high-visibility jacket cycling, last pic taken this evening.
This morning, I was unaware that Grog joined up with group for bridge ride when I flew by, going somewhere else for a meeting. Kudos, for using the bridge lane!


Quote from an article today on the political importance of this event. It really does feel like another major historic event for cycling facility design in Vancouver. It has high media and public visibility because bridge is located downtown. We knew of cycling friend/advocate who cycled 100 kms. round trip from the suburbs for celebratory bridge bikelane lst day! The mayor, Gregor Robertson is a regular bike commuter himself and has biked over this bridge regularily for past several years. He is interviewed in some of the bike tv clips. He is same mayor and his council who wanted and now has, the front lawn of city hall, dug up for veggie/community garden. So you can see it being nurtured ..now when you visit city hall. Best use of space..for the community, that any city hall could organize.

It's only a kilometre of pavement.
But that kilometre – Burrard Bridge and the approaches on either end – has become Vancouver's grand and most controversial symbol for the war on climate change as it experiments with taking a lane of the bridge away from the internal-combustion engine and giving it to cyclists.
And, along with that, it's also the new city council's most significant political gamble.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle1217113/
http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/ (a different weblink to be given in 24 hrs. after it’s digitally archived)
http://www.globaltv.com/globaltv/bc/...tml?id=1786163


Whatever your local community does...don't give up. Offer convenient alternate routes for car drivers if they perceive congestion, although there may not be.

Your local media might still report in a biased way. But cycling community and city council need to continuously give objective, statistical info. of past, current and future usage volumes by cyclists, vehicles and pedestrians.

[crazycanuck]

We have cycling lanes under(as in right under) two or three bridges, two cycling paths as part of the Narrows Bridge heading into & out of the CBD & quite a few more. THey're very well used & are annoying at times.

[Geonz]

Often driver objections turn out to be just plain wrong.

We had some roads put on a "road diet." They went from four lanes (two in each direction) to three (one each direction and a dedicated turn lane) which made the lanes wider, and one stretch accidentally had a white stripe painted on it that looked so much like a bike lane people treated it as such. (Illinois has a legal/political situation that precluded official "bike facilities" of any kind being put there, tho' that's improved immensely and we are getting them now.)
People had hizzy fits and were **sure** there would be congestion, but in fact, traffic flowed more smoothly (since people didn't have to swing around left turners). The planners had taken into account the actual traffic flow and what would work. People like it now -- though a genuinely anti-bicycle candidtate still regales against road diets (they're spreading) calling the middle lane "suicide lane" and gets some support.
Same with rails to trails - people often object ... and then find out that all those fears don't pan out (thugs cruising the paths, litter everywhere) and rich road bike people are visiting their shoppes...
I hope the politicians have the cajones to stick it out and at least find out whether this is good planning or poor instead of listening to prejudiced "fears."

[bmccasland]

There aren't a lot of bike commuters around here - and the big bridges across the Mississippi River or the Gulf Intercoastal Waterway (tall enough for ships to go under) do not have bike lanes. Most bridges across the railroad tracks don't even have shoulders - so they're out for cyclists too unless you have nerves of steel.

[PamNY]

Cyclists have been advised by the local cycling advocacy organization not to allow themselves to become confrontational in behaviour with the bridge car drivers.

It's good that they are advising people to avoid confrontation. I hope they include a reminder for cyclists to obey traffic laws.

[shootingstar]

Lovely outdoor cam shot that is refreshable: http://www.katkam.ca/
Different experience at ground level on bike. http://qik.com/video/2185920

bmcc: Unfortunately there is not 1 route for a bike to go across that named area.
Geoz: which region of Illinois did your roads have car diet?

I agree with you --in line with the old mantra, if you build the roads, they (the cars) will come. So 6-lane highway/road to relieve congestion, but just gets built up with traffic over the years....especially when there is no effort to add more public transit to reduce car traffic volume.

The big bridge logjams are out in the suburbs, not downtown..I saw the traffic jams every day on the edge of the suburbs streaming into downtown Vancouver, for past 3 years, as I sat in the transit bus whipping by, heading OUT to the suburbs.

I am not sure how Seattle compares in number of major aerterial road bridges over rivers, inlets, straits, lakes, etc. But Metro Vancouver has more road bridges (that I haven't named in this thread), that cyclists either must avoid or grit their teeth, ride on them or latter, have a reasonably 'safe' ride. Certainly can be planning consideration for a long trip across multiple municipalties or on days with high winds (any time of year) or ice.

We may have the balmiest climate in Canada which allows cyclists to cycle into the winter, but what prevents more cycling frequency in winter are the bridges...